I am playing Britain,and fighting the Crimean war against Russia, with the latest patch installed.

Some rather strange things have been happening in the Black sea.

My fleets in the Western Black Sea area have fought and won several battles....against Russian land units. No Naval units involved on the Russian side. Yet infantry and artillery, and even some Cossacks, are fighting battles with my British fleets. And getting sunk. while walking on water, because the battle report shows no ships of any sort among the Russian units.

I have taken Sevastopol. I load up most of my army on transports in the city. The stack panel shows the units loaded. I send them stack of naval and land units to Constantinople, having an access treaty with the Ottomans. I have previously landed a stack there, from England, which was landed in the land area, outside of the city. Yet the when the stack of land and naval units arrives in Constantinople, only the naval units arrive, while the army has somehow unloaded itself back in Sevastopol. I have tried this twice, with identical results.

I load up a large army at Sevastopol, on transports, and send it to the western black sea. I also send two huge British fleets into the same area. The next turn, I select all the land units on the transport fleet, and drag and drop them on the Odessa area. I order the other fleets to bombard the area.

The next turn, a good deal of bombardment occurs. The log says that one of my large fleets has avoided combat with enemy units. It also says that Lord Raglans army has been committed to battle in the Western Black Sea. Raglans army is made up of land units, and is the stack I ordered to invade Odessa. No battle report. No Russian naval units. Yet my large stack of land units is sitting in their transports, with half their cohesion gone. Even though they had been ordered to invade the Odessa region. And my fleet that is reported to have avoided combat is sitting one area over, in Sevastopol.

I considered whether my ships had just failed ot spot the Russian naval units. But I had over twenty naval units in that area, with a number of scouting and frigate squadrons, most of them having four stars of experience.

This seems very strange to me. Does anyone have an idea of what is happening, and has anyone had a similar experience?

one explanation maybe that the range of 'river' movement seemed to be increased somewhere early in the .04 patching process.

I first noticed this as I could use my river pts to cross the Caspian Sea - in a way this is ok given the nature of the sea and that its inevitably under full Russian control. In my recent war with the Ottomans et al I *could* have used it to cross the Black Sea - and the AI did send some Ottoman units using this routine. But didn't, prefering the safety of escorted ships. Did use it to bring units back after the war.

First time I really noticed that something had changed was I was able to move the explorer unit that starts in E Siberia to the Yemen - it happily sailed using the coastal provinces. - I wasn't really paying attention as I expected a long land move and paid no attention to checking its location each turn.

I suspect this has entered the game code from CW2 - one of the frustrations there with the AI is its over-use of unit movement by sea or water?

It could be that the Russians sent troops by river transport into the Western Black sea, and that my land army, which should have been disembarking in Odessa, may have run into said Russians, and the engine committed them to fight the Russians, with both sides being sent back to where they started from.

It could also explain why my fleet of four Battle squadrons, four frigate squadrons, and six scouting squadrons, under THE lord Cochrane, fled to Sevastopol to avoid combat with them. It was relatively low on cohesion, and the engine could have interpreted the Russian using river transport as a threat, maybe thinking they could board the warships?

So it seems that the AI can prevent amphibious invasions by sending troops into coastal waters by river transport. Very odd.

As for why the Russians would send unescorted troops while the Turks sent escorts, there is a very old Russian saying "We have a lot of people". It was used by the Russians themselves to explain their willingness to take high losses in war. Two examples would be the Russian troops standing silently in formation while Senarmont moved hes artillery into grapeshot range and shot them down by the thousands, at Friedland, and why the Russians cleared minefields in World War 2 by marching infantry through them. Strange that the engine is using this tactic for the Russians. Probably a quirk.

I am also thinking that maybe the problem in landing troops in Constantinople has to do with the nature of passage and supply rights. Your ships can use the ports of a nation where you have such treaties, but your troops cannot enter their cities. So if you send a fleet with troops to land in such a port city, the troops will be unloaded in the city they embarked on.